Current Exhibition: Psychotropic Seas

Psychotropic Seas

An exhibition that examines three artists' consciousness-expanding responses to ocean water through painting, sculptural installation and video.

Dakota Gearhart is the progeny of a philosophizing mechanic and a feminist director. Identifying as a bisexual mermaid, her strategies in photography, video, and installation respond to and expand on emergent qualities in nature and culture through staged fantasy. Gearhart bundles together her interests in perception, the role of care and intimacy, and the importance of fantasy in articulating more creative and less oppressive futures. Her work encompasses photography, video, and room-sized multimedia installations. These incorporate found materials she collects at microbiology labs, spam folders, and industrial dumps. Reorganized according to science-fiction and anti-commercial aesthetics, these materials function as tools to subvert exploitative power dynamics.

Jean Nagai is a artist/muralist (b.1979 Seattle, WA) and currently living in Los Angeles. He received a BA from The Evergreen State College and his work has been shown in the Pacific Northwest and other places across the US. By engaging in a meditative process by which the sum of many individual dots accumulate to form a larger synergic whole, Jean’s work both creates and explores a visual microcosm and macrocosm of the western landscape. Working with a social practice primarily focused on nature to raise environmental awareness and harmony in this modern world.

Amanda Tasse, PhD is an Assistant Professor of New Media Communications in the School of Arts & Communication, with an emphasis on visualization. She works across media disciplines including filmmaking, animation, videogames, VR and interactive art to investigate how different forms contribute unique and dimensional perspectives to multi-layered problems. She often collaborates with scientists to explore what she calls poetic science: new methods for popular science communication using arts based practices. Her media arts dissertation at the USC School of Cinematic Arts communicated a theme from marine science using a video game, short film, and visualization apps.